"It's groundbreaking legislation," said Heidi Culbertson, director of client development at the Harris Law Firm, which specializes in family law. "For the first time, Colorado will have a formula for maintenance."

It's part of a national alimony reform movement, with many state legislatures seeking to either limit or standardize spousal maintenance payments. In particular, the focus has been on the lack of consistency in maintenance orders, which resulted in perceptions of unfairness and the inability to predict outcomes.

"I had a friend who was married to a very wealthy man in Aspen, and she had a very similar case to someone in Denver," Culbertson said, "but the maintenance awards were night and day."

A growing number of states — including Maine, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and New Jersey — have switched to the use of maintenance formulas, similar to those used to determine child support, to calculate payments.

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Now, after more than two years of work, including a comprehensive task force and judicial training, Colorado will join these states with a formula of its own.

The advisory guidelines will help to calculate the amount and duration of maintenance orders for marriages of three to 20 years in length, where the annual combined income does not exceed $240,000.

It will be applied to divorce cases filed on or after Jan. 1.

Brett Zachman talks about the new alimony laws in Denver, Co on October 17, 2013. New alimony laws go into effect January 1, 2014. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

There is uncertainty, however, about how closely it will be followed by judges. The guidelines are only an advisory to the courts, a starting point to assist in deciding how much, if any, maintenance should be awarded, and for how long. The final decision still rests with the judge, who must consider such facts as each spouse's income, financial resources and needs, and marital property.

Because judges have not begun to rule under the new guidelines, patterns have not yet been established, and so anxiety is high among family-law lawyers.

"I'm hearing different rumors from county to county," said Stephen Plog, a co-founder of the family-law practice Plog & Stein in Greenwood Village. "Some judges are saying they are not going to follow it; they'll still do it the old way."

Family-law attorney Kevin Massaro has specific advice for high-income earners: "If you're the partner making a lot of money right now and your marriage is on the rocks, you're better off filing this year than next."

"The worry we have as practitioners is that people are going to lock up and hold out, thinking there is a pot of gold in the maintenance world," Massaro said. "It's a wild card, which is why we are all worried."

The guidelines for determination of spousal maintenance, established when House Bill 1058 became law in May, calculate support by taking 40 percent of the higher income earner's monthly income and subtracting 50 percent of the lower earner's monthly income. The law also considers such things as marital property and whether there are children. The period of support is based on the length of the marriage.

"This could be a problem for the (high-income spouse) if the formula is applied in a draconian fashion," Plog said.

Based on an example Plog offered — a husband making $200,000 a year and his wife earning $50,000 — under the new formula, the husband's 40 percent per month would be $6,667, and 50 percent of the wife's income would be $2,083 per month, so the result under the formula would mean the wife receives about $4,583 per month.

Under the old system, he said, if the wife's expenses exceed her income by $1,500 a month, a court might order monthly maintenance of $1,500 to $2,000 to help meet her reasonable needs.

"If uniformly applied, the (new guidelines) will promote settlements," Plog said, "but the problem is that the payer will have a gun to the head."

Brett Zachman, a financial counselor who founded the men's group BeMen, supported the legislation because he thinks a formula will create objectivity in a situation that's tough for men, "both for stay-at-home men, who sidelined their careers and are an emotional wreck because of divorce, and for breadwinners making a lot of money who consider divorce financial Armageddon."

When he and his wife divorced, their incomes were about equal so there was only child support to work out.

"The guidelines took the emotions out of it," he said. "If there is an open playing field, it becomes about egos, agendas and pocketbooks."

Advocates say the formula will create fairness in a state where results have been dramatically different from one judicial district to the next.

"Divorce is very hard on people," said Helen Shreves, a divorce mediator and former Colorado Women's Bar president who worked on the legislation. "They cut their assets in half. Sometimes a person has not worked in 10 or 15 years, and a judge will say, 'You'll be on your feet in three years.' The truth is that it doesn't happen that way. People need help to transition."

The extremes of judicial discretion were revealed at an annual luncheon a few years ago, which featured a panel of metro-area judges. Each judge was given the same fact sheet and asked to make a maintenance order.

The results ranged "from no maintenance to something like $5,000 a month for life," Shreves said. "We were stunned."

Alimony orders also are cyclical.

"Years ago, Boulder was considered a maintenance haven, but now it's not so much," family-law attorney Jordan Fox said. "In Denver, at times maintenance was positive, but now it's more difficult."

Attempts were made a decade ago to develop a maintenance formula in Colorado, but proposed legislation was defeated.

Then, in 2010, Mercedes Aponte's 12-year marriage ended. She was 47 and had lost her job as a field manager for Andrew Romanoff's 2010 U.S. Senate campaign when he lost the election.

Her divorce decree ordered spousal support for 18 months, the amount of time the judge determined she needed to regain her financial footing.

"The result was that I fell into poverty myself," she said. "I was trying to survive the economic downturn. "

She decided to take action. She began talking with people including Women's Lobby of Colorado president Chaer Robert. Others soon got involved.

State Rep. Beth McCann, D-Denver, introduced a maintenance formula bill in 2012. It was unanimously opposed by the Family Law Section of the Colorado Bar Association, so she withdrew the bill and created a task force to come up with a new rule. They met monthly to discuss the need for more consistent maintenance awards, debating pros and cons of a formula, and pondered specific aspects of Colorado law.

Judges, including William Hood of the 2nd Judicial District and Angela Arkin of the 18th Judicial District, helped craft the law, so that it would work for families and courts in the way that those who drafted the law intended.

"Many judges have traditionally struggled with what is fair for divorcing families in the maintenance area," Arkin said in an e-mail interview. "Most judges did not practice family law before they took the bench, so they did not necessarily have the experience that would be helpful in determining reasonable maintenance."

When McCann reintroduced the bill in January, support and opposition was evenly split, "and there was a lot of controversy over whether we should have a formula or not," said Gary Polidori, a family-law attorney in Lakewood who served on the task force.

The Women's Lobby made the bill a priority legislative issue, arguing that it would promote settlement and successful mediation, reduce litigation, and prevent women and families from falling into poverty. In 2011, single women with children had a median income of $26,705, the lowest of all family types in Colorado, compared with $42,075 for single men with children.

The bill was passed in April and signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper in May.

Aponte believes her personal setback helped spark political change.

"As a society, we're saying there is economic value to a marriage, and when it ends, how far do we want people to fall? Do we want to just let that happen as a society," she said, "or say we have the responsibility to help people build back out of the situation?"

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